American Avocets

[Ian Cassell]

Canon 7D
Canon EF 400mm f/5.6L

1/1000sec f/7.1 ISO 400 HH

Sharpening, crop for composition in CS5
NR on BG in Noiseware Pro

[arash_hazeghi]

nice action shot Ian, great pose. the IQ is not great however, image looks soft and noisy.

[christopher galeski]

nice pose,but agree, image a bit soft and noisey.

[Marina Scarr]

Love the behavior but have to agree that the birds do not look sharp which is a shame for such great action. Was this a large crop?

[Roman Kurywczak]

Great timing and action.....agreewith the comments above so hope you can rework this!

[Kaustubh Deshpande]

Ian, good job getting parallel. great action indeed. SS seems be a bit low for the action. If this is abig crop, that will also explain the noise and the softness. If you were that far away, and so parallel, opening up the aperture would have been a good option. that would have got you the SS and a more blurred BG.

[Ian Cassell]

I worked on this one a bit. I toned down some areas that were nearly burnt out and worked on contrast. I added a touch of room in front of the birds. Thoughts? This was not a severe crop.

[arash_hazeghi]

Not quite there but the repost is a big improvement Ian. Some whites are still a tad hot and colors look a bit dull but much better than the original. There are clone artifacts below the wing of the upper Avocet.

[Kaustubh Deshpande]

Ian, definitely an improvement. softness issue is not there any more. some more color sat will help as Arash says. blacks look good. If mine, I'd raise the midtones a bit.